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the_newsbeagle writes "Adrian Cheok, a professor of electrical engineering in Japan, wants to invent a "multisensory Internet" that will transmit not just information, but also experiences. To usher in this new age, he started by building a haptic system that enabled him to send a hug to a chicken via the Internet. Next came the 'huggy pajama' project, which allowed distant parents to send their kid a goodnight squeeze. Lately he's begun working on sending a taste over the internet with his 'digital lollypop' project."

For the ducks and chickens I raise, I put their necks on a log and then I use an ax. One can also twist the necks while hunting for example and when no log and ax are handy. I feel the ax is better, hanging is a big no no in my book;-)

P.S. I know one hangs them (by the feet) for the meat to age and the blood to drain.

What interface? Nobody seen "strange days" around here? The future will simply bypass all the bullshit and send the simulation directly into your brain. Talk about an easy way to keep the masses passive! They could live in the worst rat hole and be happy as clams, as long as they could plug in at the end of the day.

"If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain" and THAT will be the future, only it won't be brought by some enslaving

Y'know, make all the genital slang references you want, but at the end of the day, this is about hugging chickens. And chickens are cute-looking fluffy creatures that look like they need a hug. And this allows you to do so without getting scratched up or pecked!

True remote physical examinations, with the patient and physician both feeling and responding to the tactile interaction. This could be huge - especially in terms of extreme remote medicine, such as handling astronaut-patients on lengthy missions to Mars or the asteroid belt.

I could see it working on earth, but surely the latency would make it impossible for a physician on earth to tactility interact with a patient on Mars. At best Mars is about 3 light minutes away from earth, and it can be as far as 20+ light minutes away. 100-200ms is enough to throw off online gamers, so I imagine 600,000ms would be a bit too much for a doctor to work with.

You know, the latency may not really matter. Just train the doctors to wait three minutes to get the tactile response from Mars - so if the physician feels your throat or abdomen for abnormal swelling, the physician has a timer giving an alert as to when to look for the tactile response.

It's actually because of the researcher's Australian upbringing. Quoted from here [ieee.org]:

Growing up in Adelaide, Australia, Cheok had often played with the chickens kept by his grandfather, so he decided to focus on poultry (rule one). He built haptic jackets for the chickens himself (rule two), embedding them with vibrating elements. Tinkering taught him just how difficult it is to produce a gentle, humanlike touch. “The system develops as you build it,” Cheok says. “I see research as iterative—you’re learning from what you’re making.”

It's an important step forward, but only in Japan would hugging a chicken be an intermediate step.

You have to take account of the proverbial Japanese indirectness. What the professor wants to demonstrate becomes clearer when you think of the following distinction: eroticism is when you use a feather; pornography is when you use to whole chicken.

Actually, I don't eat poultry. I happen to be a bird enthusiast since I was a little kid, used to raise chicks and that kind of thing. For me birds are like cats for everyone else. (I also happen to hate cats, their "I own my owner" attitude kills any semblance of cuteness they might have).